The Black Cauldron
by CompanionWanderer
Summary: Working Title. A sequel to my fic, Sunrise, and a continuation of my project to retell all the events in the Chronicles of Prydain from Eilonwy's point of view.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Note: I am torn about posting this now. I had intended to wait until I was finished, or nearly so, with this book, to avoid the reader drop-off that happens during the inevitable delays between some chapters. I don't even have a proper title yet, and there may be major changes to the arc I'm currently establishing, which could throw the whole darn thing off, and if I were a more patient person, I would stick with my original plan._

 _But I'm not that person. And I thrive on reader feedback, particularly when I get stuck anywhere, so I'm going to go ahead with this beginning in hopes that knowing I have fans waiting for the next update will motivate me to continue._ _  
_

 _For those familiar with my writing, and particularly my previous fic,_ Sunrise _, there will be some familiar themes and motifs here. I'm building further on the sensorial nature of Eilonwy's experience with magic and her ambivalent, conflicting emotions about her history and heritage; now I also get to explore the healing experience of living at Caer Dallben and continue my favorite activity of enjoying the endless playground that is her relationship with Taran. As always, it's very internal, and I'm approaching her with my usual delight. In addition, this book offers some wonderful new characters - one of whom I know several readers will be eagerly anticipating. I hope I do them all justice, and I hope you all enjoy._

 _I realized recently I've been writing Prydain fic for over twelve years now, and my obsession has never abated. I'm so grateful for the companions I've met along the way, and the support and encouragement of all my readers. As always, my friends...happy wandering._

 _~CW_

* * *

 **Chapter One**

The fire wouldn't light.

Oh, it would've lit just fine the ordinary way - a few twigs tossed into the embers and breathed into life, the method she'd mastered, to her satisfaction, in the past year. She even knew, now, how to catch the sparks struck from a flint shard into a handful of dry peat, and turn the resulting wisp of smoke into a blaze, if it so happened that an improperly-banked fire had no embers to offer in the morning.

But today both embers and flint sat to the side, ignored, as Eilonwy focused intently on a swatch of tinder that sat, stubbornly cold, in the ashes of the big fireplace. She shut her eyes, looking inward, felt the quickening in her blood as she whispered the strange words that _should_ make the little pile of wood shavings burst into a fine, crackling flame with a mere snap of her fingers. She waited until the tingle in her fingertips reached a certain point, took a breath, snapped...

Nothing. For the fourth time, nothing.

With a growl she snatched an iron poker and jabbed at the ash pile until the embers beneath were exposed, shoving the tinder over them as though it deserved immolation for being personally offensive to her. The heat seared her face as she bent to blow on the coals, careless of how her angry puffing sent ashes flurrying onto the hearth. Let them fly. She'd sweep later.

A creaky voice behind her made her jump. "The angrier you get," it said mildly, "the less you'll be able to do."

Eilonwy whirled around, feeling simultaneously guilty and indignant. For a man so frail he looked like a butterfly sneeze would blow him over, Dallben moved as silently and stealthily as a cat, and always seemed to turn up just when your behavior was most likely to be the sort you didn't want witnessed. He was sitting at the big oaken table now, with a sheaf of parchment in front of him, his glittering eyes surveying her with amusement.

"I wasn't angry the first try," she said peevishly, "but it still didn't work."

Dallben only grunted, turned his eyes downward, and produced a quill and inkwell from somewhere among his robes. The scratch of the nib upon parchment grated at her ear and she grit her teeth, pulling back the words that pounded, like fists at a closed door, behind her mouth. He was ignoring her on purpose and she knew why. It had been a full six months after her arrival before he would even say the word "magic" around her, and now, over a year since she'd come, he still brought a lesson to an abrupt and unceremonious halt the instant she lost her temper.

"Achren could do magic even when she was angry," she had muttered once, sulking, and his sleepy eyes were suddenly piercing silver flames in their deep sockets.

"That," he had said, "is reason enough to control yourself."

So now she turned away, chewing the insides of her cheeks while she fed kindling onto the smoldering little blaze and arranged larger logs around it, building the spaces for air to flow as Taran had taught her, a process she always found both satisfying and soothing. By the time the flames leapt, crackling and cheerful, the tight feeling in her throat was mostly melted away, and she sat back on her heels and sighed.

Sensing the shift, Dallben glanced back up, with a twitch in the corner of the whiskers that obscured his mouth. "Now, tell me again how you weren't angry the first try."

The sardonic note in his voice made her laugh, to her own surprise. "I was," she admitted. "Not at the fire though. Or...well, at the not-fire. Something completely unrelated."

"Magic," Dallben rumbled, "doesn't know the difference. Try again." He pushed an unlit candle in its stand across the table toward her.

Almost without thought, she whispered to herself, snapped her fingers. The candle flared, with an audible pop, just as Coll walked in with an armful of firewood. He blurted a startled exclamation.

"Belin! How's a man to get used to that? One spell-flinger in the house was enough, whatever." Belying his words, he winked at her as he stacked the wood on the hearth, and Eilonwy giggled, standing to throw her arms around his broad middle and kiss his leathery cheek.

"Dallben never flings spells. You know that." She released him, noticing what he carried; from a sack over his shoulder he pulled a brace of snared rabbits, already skinned and dressed. Her stomach growled hopefully. "Roast today? Not pottage?"

"Both," he said, laying the meat on the chopping table near the fire. "Bit of a feast. Be a good lass and fetch the turnips and onions, will you? Three baskets each." He straightened up as she turned to leave, and said, "Smoit coming?"

"Who?" she asked, confused, but he was looking at Dallben, who, nodding affirmation, repeated sharply to her, "turnips and onions" as though she hadn't heard. With a little huff Eilonwy departed through the side door, slowly enough to hear Coll mutter "won't be enough" under his breath as she left.

The root cellar was cool and dark and musty and always reminded her a bit of the tunnels underneath Spiral Castle. Hastily she filled two large baskets and hoisted them onto her hips, staggering back out into the brisk autumn sunlight. Six baskets of onions and turnips! She'd have to make three trips. And this after setting her to baking enough bread yesterday for a small army. What on earth were they planning?

A halloo from the stables interrupted her thoughts; Taran was trotting toward her, having finished his morning chores, rumpled and still shaking loose bits of hay from his tunic and hair. He whistled when he saw her heavy load, and reached out for the basket of turnips. "You bringing up the whole cellar? Why so many?"

"Coll asked," she answered, gratefully releasing the basket. He swung it to his shoulder with careless ease and she smothered a frown, a trifle vexed - not at him, exactly; he couldn't help how he'd grown and strengthened in the last year - but at herself, for always _noticing_. "I've got to bring up two more loads of each. _And_ he's brought in skinned rabbits for roasting - half-a-dozen of them. Who do you think they're expecting?"

"You know I haven't any idea," Taran answered, scowling, as they trudged the worn path back toward the cottage door. "But I've had to muck out every blasted stall - even the empty ones. On top of all the harvest! So there's at least three coming; maybe more. It'd be nice if they'd tell us - when the work has doubled."

He fell silent then as they entered the cottage, for they both knew the work had more than doubled for Coll, and were ashamed to complain in his earshot. The sturdy farmer was busy skewering the rabbits for the spit, and already the biggest iron cook pot was standing on its squat legs upon the hearth, half-full of water. Dallben, still sitting at the table, was nodding over his parchments.

"Ah." Coll turned and eyed the baskets approvingly, eyes glinting with pride at the pile of creamy, rosy-tipped turnips. "Look at the size of those. Good harvest this year." He favored Eilonwy with a lopsided grin. "It's good luck, having a lady around."

Taran snorted and she cast him a venomous look before returning Coll's smile. "I don't believe you've _ever_ had a bad harvest. But happy to oblige."

"Good," he replied, "then you can start peeling and chopping those" - he chuckled at her muffled groan - "and _you" -_ aside, to Taran - "just for that noise you made, you can go get the rest. Two more baskets each."

Taran grinned, caught the frayed linen towel Coll snapped at him, and snapped it back. They tussled for a moment, laughing, before the old warrior managed to catch him by the shoulders, spun him around, and planted a boot in his backside to shove him toward the door.

Dallben's voice brought an end to the commotion like the stomp of a foot. "This house," the old enchanter croaked crossly, "once upon a time, was a place of peace and rest. Take that foolishness outside, or conduct yourselves with more decorum. For that matter," he added, looking severely at Taran, "are your chores done?"

Unabashed, Taran grabbed an apple from the wooden bowl on the table and grinned around it as his teeth cracked the skin. "Not anymore," he declared merrily, muffled around his mouthful. "I've got onions to fetch." He bowed, and swept out the door with the self-important pomp of a courtier taking leave of a king.

Eilonwy held her breath and pressed her lips together, for Dallben was muttering _he needs more to do_ and Coll was quivering beside her. If he said a word she'd explode with laughter.

Dutifully she took up a knife and went to work on the turnips, humming to herself, content. It was nice, this...all of it, even the menial tasks that Achren would have said were beneath her; it was pleasant to be useful, to know how to do practical things, to be a part of the small, self-contained world of Caer Dallben. A year in, this life was still too new for her to scorn any of it as dull, though she knew Taran often found it so. Perhaps if she'd lived here always, as he had, she'd be more sympathetic to his restlessness; they'd had adventure, after all, but it, and her world prior to it, had mostly been an uncomfortable business, and she was glad for the peace and predictability of the farm, for the easy affection among its inhabitants.

It had taken time to adjust, of course. The amount of labor alone had been a shock; she had looked forward to rising with the sun but hadn't realized rising didn't just mean getting up and dressed but also starting fires and feeding chickens and getting breakfast-cooking lessons from Coll, immediately, the very first morning. It meant washing-up in the scullery and then joining Taran and Gurgi in the gardens, learning the difference between weeds and vegetables, how to claw up the roots of the one without harming the other; how to tell when a pea pod was full and fat enough for picking, how to lay the firm golden apples in their bins without bruising. It meant carrying water, endlessly, from the well to the house and the animals' troughs, until one day she had noticed that she no longer minded the weight of the yoke and its burden, and smiled at the sight of her own hands, sun-browned and strong, on the ropes. It meant hauling piles of linen to scrub in the creek at the edge of the gardens, hanging it all up on the lines near the house to flap in the sunshine and bring in, smelling of grass and freshness, to be put away.

But it wasn't all work all the time. Summer had also meant racing Taran and Gurgi, in the warm afternoons when the sun beat hot, down to the hidden place in the woods where the brook poured over a dark shoulder of slate in a silver curtain, into a deep pool where they threw themselves like shrieking gulls diving after fish, like otters sliding slick over the mossy banks into the water. She had taught Taran to swim, shocked at his ignorance, and yet could not answer him when he'd asked where she'd learned it. He had taught her how to drop a line along the brook bank so that she could yank it out with a trout flashing at its end, though she never learned to mimic his trick of reaching beneath that same bank with his bare brown hand, sliding it under a fish's belly and stroking it until he caught it by the gills and flipped it from the water with one quick movement.

Summer meant ripe strawberries, fresh cream and honey and sun-bursting blackberries on their porridge, goat's cheese and butter spread upon their bread, and earthenware jugs of milk kept cool and frothy in the creek. It meant warm nights when she lay and gazed out her loft window, its shutter thrown open, listening to the crickets and the occasional ghostly warble of an owl, drifting among the broad sweep of stars spilled like salt and mist across the depths of sky, until her memories of the dank curtains and closed darkness of Spiral Castle seemed like an old nightmare, stale and harmless.

Autumn had followed summer and that had meant harvest, long, long, back-aching days in the barley field, stacking the golden swaths of cut grain until she saw them in her sleep, turning up root vegetables and piling them in the cellar by the cartload, tying up bundles of the last herbs before frost and hanging them in the scullery to dry, cutting wood to be stacked and laid in against the winter. Every night she had fallen into her straw pallet in the loft too exhausted even to undress, but it was a satisfying kind of tiredness, a sense of having done something important and _good._ When Coll had lit the celebratory bonfire on the last day of harvest, she had danced around it, full of a wild joy that seemed to come up from the very earth, something that crackled up through the scarlet-and-gold of the flames and the fiery-leafed trees and out, upon the smoky air, up into the night and the gold-ripened moon.

And then, for the first time in her life she had found she did not hate winter, saw beauty in the crystalline transformation of the world, in the comfortable coziness of family and hearth while the wind shrieked in white fury outside the closed shutters. Winter meant evenings round the fire - after _more_ cooking - drinking hot cider and mending holes in stockings or sewing patches over threadbare knees and elbows, letting the seams out of garments grown suddenly too short and tight for her, oiling tack and leather shoes, watching the wood shavings curl golden from Coll's knife as he carved knots and chains into the handles of wooden spoons. Dallben read aloud from the Book of Three and gave her magic lessons, and Coll told stories and bantered with them all, or they sang together, old songs, some of which she knew, just barely, whispers in her mind that came back like the memory of a dream.

Spring had come, with its melting and mud and the green mist of buds on all the trees, and birds twittering and nest-building in the boughs of apple trees turned to draperies of pink sweetness. There were baby goats, born before her eyes and stumbling on their lumpy awkward legs within the hour, chicks who nestled warm like tufts of pussywillow in her cupped palms, a mewling puddle of silky kittens discovered in a corner of the loft. The horses, even proud Melynlas, snorting at the indignity of a harness, his winter coat coming off in clumps, dragged the sharp plough through the dark earth by turns, turning up the rich loam to warm in the sun and crumble under her bare toes as she walked behind, dropping the seeds saved from last year's crop.

And then it had all begun again, another glorious summer, too short, another harvest, with the ashes of this year's bonfire just gone cold these two days. The air outside was crisp, and golden with down-drifting leaves, and the cook-fire in the big hearth was a welcome, cheering thing.

Eilonwy tossed the pile of chopped turnips into the iron pot, dumping the parings into Hen Wen's slop bucket, just as Taran returned with the second load of vegetables with Gurgi gamboling on his heels, hoping for spilled largess. The creature's attention was instantly diverted when he saw what Coll was doing.

"Oh, joyous crunchings!" he gurgled, clapping his hands. "Meat for smokings and stewings! And bones for chewings and chompings! Gurgi will help with the cookings!" His wooly arm stretched out, one black-clawed finger plucking eagerly at a rabbit, and Coll smacked it lightly with a wooden spoon.

"Oh no, you don't," he said, as Gurgi snatched his hand back with a yelp of surprise. "Last time you helped with the spit, we wound up with nothing _but_ bones, and you sitting there with gravy on your face, pretending to know nothing about it." He spoke sternly, but his eyes twinkled, and Gurgi huffed and fell back, his ears flat against his scraggly skull. Abashed, but unable to feel truly downcast in the presence of so much food, he folded his long, oddly-jointed legs onto a stool to watch the proceedings, his amber eyes gleaming. Eilonwy tossed him a turnip peel and he caught it in his teeth, wiggling all over with joy and beaming at her.

Taran returned presently with the last load, and, noticing the full slop pail, picked it up. "Hen Wen's bath day," Coll remarked, as if to the air, and Eilonwy heard Taran suppress a groan. It did seem an odd thing to bathe a pig, who was just going to get right back in the mud and roll anyway, but Coll and Dallben always insisted on it. Of all the creatures on the farm, the white pig was the most pampered and, to all appearances, the least useful; the only living thing there that did not earn her keep. Eilonwy's own experience had shown her, very vaguely, that something extraordinary lay within the creature's humble exterior, but it was tempting to disbelieve it based on day-to-day observation, and though she knew and was glad that Hen would never meet the fate of any other farm pig, she wondered why they didn't at least raise piglets from her. "We haven't got a boar," Taran had said when she asked, as if that settled the matter, and looked so horrified when she'd expressed a craving for bacon that she'd never brought it up again.

It took nearly an hour to prepare the pottage and stoke the fire until it simmered, and then there were the breakfast things to wash and put away in the scullery, around the back of the cottage, warmed by the outer wall of the fireplace. Scullery work was dull, but it left her mind free to wander, and she rather enjoyed being alone there, her own small domain walled by stacks of earthenware and kegs of cider and ale; roofed by bunches of dried herbs dangling from the dark-beamed ceiling and filling the space with their smells. She was proud of being able to name them all now, and of knowing their uses.

Setting out pots that needed scouring, Eilonwy frowned at the edge of her tattered sleeve, too short to roll to her elbow but still long enough to get in the way. She was outgrowing her clothes again, and where were new ones to come from this time? -for this was the last of the stash of clothing left behind by Coll's lost wife, and there was little fabric for making new things; they traded for cloth goods, Taran had told her, with the Rover caravans that passed through the area periodically, and they had not come these past two years. She had taken to wearing Taran's old outgrown leggings under her skirts to make up for their shortcomings - and also because it was so much more practical and comfortable - but he had no shirts to spare, for he wore them to tatters before he outgrew them. For that matter he needed new things, too. The garments they'd been gifted at Caer Dathyl were long-since worn out and outgrown; Coll could do wonders with deerskin, and did, but one needed linen and wool for certain things, and both were in short supply.

A loud commotion from outdoors interrupted her thoughts; voices shouting angrily - Taran's she knew, but the other was strange and harsh; neither said anything articulate. Pot still in hand, she hopped over a crate and ran to the scullery door.

Across from the cottage, next to the pigsty, a strange man on a thin, speckled roan mare was leaning out over the far side of his saddle and seemed to be struggling with something. For a moment she thought he was trying not to fall off his mount, but as the horse turned and cantered closer to the cottage she realized, with a jolt of furious indignation, that he held a thrashing, roaring Taran by the front of the jacket, and was dragging him over the turf toward the front door.

With an angry cry she shot from the doorway just as the stranger threw his burden on the ground, so hard that Taran went sprawling head over heels. Chickens scattered, squawking in terror, and Coll and Dallben both appeared at the cottage door.

Eilonwy scrambled to help Taran up, though by the time she reached him he was staggering to his feet. He pointedly ignored the hand she offered; his wounded pride and embarrassment were as thick as fog in the air around him and she choked back the outraged shout that rose to her throat, knowing it would only make him worse. Besides, the stranger was already shouting and wouldn't hear her.

"Are you Dallben?" he demanded, with a tone that made her stare up in amazement that anyone should so impudently address the owner of that name. "I have brought your pig-boy to be thrashed for his insolence."

" _Cheek,"_ she hissed, but Dallben was speaking, and only the knowledge that Dallben would disapprove of the two or three hexes that presented themselves to her mind as subtle alternatives to violence kept her silent. She wrapped her clenched fists in her skirt, and without realizing it, stepped in front of Taran, shielding him.

"Tut," the old man said; his voice was mild, but she read the alertness in his mien. Dallben was never truly angry, but his wakefulness seemed to rise with the intensity of any situation, along with his sarcasm. "Whether he is insolent is one thing; whether he should be thrashed is quite another. In either case, I need no suggestions from you."

"I am a Prince of Pen-Llarcau!" retorted the stranger, who she now saw was barely more than a boy, himself; certainly not more than a year or two older than Taran. His face was thin and fine-boned, pale and sallow, with the beginnings of a very wispy beard.

"Yes, yes, yes." Dallben dismissed him with an impatient flick of his bony wrist. "I am quite aware of all that and too busy to be concerned with it. Go, water your horse and your temper at the same time. You shall be called when you are wanted."

Wonderful, dear Dallben, how fond she was of him. The young man opened his mouth as if to argue, but Dallben's frown, to whose effectiveness she could testify at brooking further debate, seemed to make him think twice. He snorted, without looking at them, and turned his horse toward the stable.

Coll had joined them now, and was brushing the ground-in dirt from the back of Taran's jacket. The boy was bruised and disheveled, his face scraped and streaked with earth and his lower lip cracked and bleeding. "You should know better, my boy, than to quarrel with strangers," the old farmer murmured, with some humor.

"That's true enough," Eilonwy agreed, "especially when he's on horseback and you're on foot."

Taran was clearly unappreciative of their wisdom. He glared toward the stables with clenched fists. "Next time I see him-"

"When you see him again," Dallben interrupted mildly, "you, at least, shall conduct yourself with as much restraint and dignity as possible - which, I allow, may not be very great, but you shall have to make do with it. Be off, now. The Princess Eilonwy can help you to be a little more presentable than you are at the moment."

Presentable for what, she thought, distracted, and waved Taran toward the scullery with a puzzled frown, still gazing at Dallben for a clue. But the old enchanter merely disappeared into the cottage, and she sighed. "Come on."

He followed her in glum silence, all his good-humored gaiety of the morning sucked out of him. Eilonwy wondered whether the stranger would stay long, and if so, where he would sleep, and if she might manage to find something nasty to slip into his bedroll on accident. Taran ducked into the low doorway of the scullery after her and slumped against the edge of a table. His face was a sight. She wrung a towel from the water bucket and dabbed at his bloody lip gently; he winced and kept his eyes on the floor, which was just as well, in these close quarters. Lately, such proximity made her feel very strange. Not unpleasant, no...but...well, just odd. Like something turned inside-out.

"However did it happen?" she murmured, but he only turned his face away a little, frowning, and she sighed. He confided in her about so much that his tendency toward brooding silence when embarrassed rebuffed and hurt her. If he could trust her with his hopes and dreams he ought to be able to trust her with his griefs and pains, after all. Goodness knew he was acquainted with most of hers - but then she'd never been one to suffer in silence.

The stubborn downward tilt of his chin was making her task difficult. Impatience overrode her self-consciousness; she forced his jaw up with her free hand to attend to the dirt underneath, steadily avoiding looking him in the eye. Which was difficult, with his resentful glare turned on her from mere inches away; she knew, without looking, exactly what they'd look like; those black-fringed eyes sulking under his dark brows, green as light filtered through leaves, with that expression that always made her wobble between an urge to shake him for his stubbornness or...or...something else, but she didn't let herself wonder what. Conscious of the warmth creeping into her face, she chewed her bottom lip to keep from saying something idiotic just to fill the thickening silence.

She was concentrating so hard on a streak of grime on his left cheekbone that she jumped at a sudden scrabbling at the window, but not so hard that she failed to notice that Taran was equally startled. Gurgi's shaggy head popped into the window frame, twigs-first, followed by the rest of him as he scrambled over the sill, blithely oblivious to the door a few feet to his right.

"Woe and sadness!" the creature howled, throwing himself between them to pluck anxiously at Taran's shirt. "Gurgi sees smackings and whackings by strengthful lord! Poor, kindly master! Gurgi is sorry for him."

Taran looked sheepish at this excess, but before he could say anything, Gurgi danced in a circle and yelped out, "But there is news! Gurgi also sees mightiest of princes riding! Yes, yes, with great galloping on white horse, with black sword. What joy!"

Eilonwy gasped in delight. Taran leapt to his feet, trials forgotten. "What's that? Do you mean Prince Gwydion? It can't be..."

"It is." A familiar voice, beloved, behind them. Taran was fast, but she was closer; Eilonwy whirled, and threw her arms around the tall figure that had materialized in the doorway.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

* * *

Gwydion returned her embrace with a gentleness that would have surprised her in a man of his prowess, had she not had previous knowlege of him. Then he held her out at arm's length, and looked her over with eyes whose approval did not quite mask the curious, wistful expression she always caught in them. "Well-met, all of you," he said, glancing at the others, his face breaking into its rare wolf-smile. "Gurgi looks as hungry as ever, Eilonwy prettier than ever...and you, Assistant Pig-Keeper, a little the worse for wear." His green-flecked eyes twinkled. "Dallben has mentioned how you came by those bruises."

Taran threw back his head, defiant even before his idol. "I sought no quarrel."

"But one found you nonetheless," the prince chuckled. "I think that must be the way of it with you, Taran of Caer Dallben. No matter...let me look at you." He grasped the boy by the shoulders and held him out, as he had Eilonwy. "You've grown since last we met. I hope you have gained as much wisdom as height."

Eilonwy snorted. Taran scowled at her and Gwydion laughed, releasing him and clapping him on the shoulder. "We shall see. Now I must make ready for the council."

He strode out into the yard, leaving Eilonwy and Taran gaping at each other before they rushed to be on his heels, reaching the door at the same time. Gurgi, seeing the way blocked, leapt out the way he'd come in. Taran, all manners forgotten, shoved past, jostling Eilonwy against the doorpost. With a strangled noise of outrage, she kicked at him as he stumbled out, but he ignored her in his excitement as he scrambled after Gwydion. "Council?" he panted, "what council? Dallben said nothing of a council."

"Dallben hasn't been saying much of anything to anybody," Eilonwy added, as Gwydion paused in his stride.

"You should understand by now that of what he knows, Dallben speaks little," he said. "Even in as short a time as you've known him, I think. But yes, there is to be a council. I have summoned others to meet us here."

Taran was almost bouncing on his toes, his excitement so palpable she thought she could see it with her eyes shut. "I am old enough to sit in a council of men!" he burst out eagerly. "I have learned much; I have fought at your side; I -"

Gwydion laid a hand on his arm. "Gently, gently. We have agreed you shall have a place. Though manhood may not be all that you believe." He hesitated, gazing at the boy; Eilonwy felt a sudden wave of inexplicable sadness roll over him. She blinked, but it was gone, and he was clapping Taran on the shoulders once more. "Stand ready. Your task will be given soon enough."

He strode off, Taran staring after him as though he'd just been handed the royal treasury. He spun toward her, his face aglow. "Did you hear that? I'm to sit at the council! They've a task for me!"

"It's—" she began, falteringly, and stopped in confusion, for the impulse to be happy in response to his joy was warring with something...something she could not name, that was settling hollow and heavy in her chest. She stared at Taran; his glowing eyes were looking past her, _through_ her, and she realized he might as well be leagues away, shouting his triumph to anyone who would listen. "It's wonderful," she finally managed. He seemed not to notice the flatness of her voice.

"So this is what they've been planning! I wonder what it's about. And who else might be coming!" He was pacing, Gurgi following him adoringly while she stood still, pensive, watching them. "He said he's invited others. It must be something tremendous! What do you think it could be?"

"I can't imagine," she said dully, knowing he wasn't listening, "but I hope it's done soon." His enthusiasm was beginning to annoy her; in fact, she felt she was about to lose her temper completely. Drat councils and Gwydion and everyone else, coming in and upsetting everything. "I've...got work to do," she muttered, almost to herself, and was not surprised when he waved a vague hand with an "mmph" of acknowledgement as she backed away toward the cottage. Her eyes felt hot and prickly when she reached the scullery and plunked herself down before her pile of pots. She took a breath and held it to keep it from coming out as a sob, tossing a handful of clean sand into an empty cauldron and scrubbing with unnecessary vigor.

She'd had to get away from him just to _think,_ but the only thought that she could muster seemed to be _not fair._ Not just the unfairness of not being invited - not even being _considered_ \- to take part in the council. She'd known, even without asking, that she'd been excluded not from deliberate slight but because none had thought to include her in the first place, though she had as much experience as Taran, and more, in dabbling in dangerous matters. This was what came of being a girl. It was easy to ignore at Caer Dallben, most of the time, where everyone worked as equals and only Dallben made occasional disgruntled noises about young ladies wearing leggings and being taught to handle weapons. Even he conceded the practicality of Coll's argument that Taran needed someone of his own age and energy level to spar with, and that it was no harm for a girl to be able to defend herself, whatever. But Eilonwy had spent enough time at Caer Dathyl to know it was not How Things Were Done in the rest of the country, barring the legends of her own ancestral home - which wasn't, in point of fact, part of Prydain - and would not have expected to be included in a council of men, or wasted time arguing over her exclusion, however silly she thought it.

A tear dropped down her nose, spotting the iron, and she scoured it away angrily. _Crying_ , yes, so very helpful just now. The scullery was not the place for a good cry - save that for the loft, where nobody would see or interrupt - and anyway what on earth was she crying about? Because a lot of men were about to have a council? Rubbish. Because Taran was sitting in on it? Also rubbish. What did she care what he did? Probably they'd just set him to oiling everyone's boots while they discussed Important Matters, and he'd come stomping back to her, his pride in his pocket, and sit and sulk for a while...and then everything would be as it was again.

 _As it was_. Eilonwy paused in her scrubbing. The _real_ unfairness was that this world she loved, this peaceful circle of home and hearth and harvest, could be so summarily interrupted and turned topsy-turvy without so much as a by-your-leave...and that aggravating boy not only did not mind this but _welcomed_ it. How could he be so elated at the prospect of danger? For danger there would be...Gwydion's grave demeanor, behind his affectionate greeting, promised it.

She sighed. It was more of Taran's restlessness, his yearning for something greater than gardening and bathing pigs. She wished she could shake enough sense into him to realize how lucky he was to live here. He had seemed to begin to understand it, a little, when she'd first met him - admitting to her, several times over their journey, that he wished he were back home, hoeing turnips, instead of marching through the woods pursued by undead creatures. And he had seemed happy enough, in the months since, despite his occasional grumblings. But now here he was, jumping at the first chance of something else. Caer Dallben still wasn't enough for him. Not even with...

Well, never mind.

More tears, thumping to the stone floor. She sniffed, angry at herself. _You're being ridiculous. You don't even know what this council is all about. It could be something_ worth _disrupting everything for._ She stared into space. Gwydion wouldn't call a council at Caer Dallben for anything other than dire import. That could mean many things, but it almost certainly involved a threat to the state. Arawn, most likely, but...but suppose...Achren...

A chill swept over her, heart pounding in her ears; she leaned her forehead against the cold iron pot, sucking in air to quell a sudden wave of nausea; the same sensation that woke her up, terrified and soaked in sweat on moonless nights. She shut her eyes, whispering the words Dallben had taught her, soft, long-voweled sounds that soothed the spirit and quieted the mind; less magic, he said, than simple meditation. Dallben rarely advocated magic when something mundane would do, and her specific talents were bent more toward conflict than calm, anyway.

The scullery seemed too small, suddenly, airless and cramped, and Eilonwy shook the sand out of the pot, stood it on its shelf, and stepped out into the yard with a deep breath of the crisp, smoky air. Pushing the thought of Achren from her mind, she turned toward the orchard and scuffed through the fallen leaves, crunching them satisfyingly under her boots, admiring their fiery hues burning against the still-green turf.

At the far edge of the orchard she paused in surprise; the stubble barley field was covered in dozens of armed men pitching tents. Horses, hitched to picket pins, mouthed the cut straw. Campfires were being kindled, and banners unfurled...a bear, a dragon, a boar.

In spite of her misgivings she felt a quickening, a mingling excitement and ambivalence. Here was something; Gwydion had, indeed, invited "others" to this council; she twitched her mouth at his customary understatement. Whatever it was all about, it was nothing small. And Taran wasn't going to be oiling any boots.

Curiosity pricked at her, drove her back through the orchard and toward the cottage; the yard was milling now with several figures; Gwydion she saw, speaking with two strangers; Taran was crossing from the stables in the company of...of...

Eilonwy shrieked, breaking into a run toward them. The tall, lanky figure at Taran's left looked up, his face alight in a broad grin as he spread his arms wide. She flung herself at him and he spun her around, laughing his merry, musical laugh, his harp jangling upon his back. When he set her back on her feet, breathless, her agitation was, for the moment, forgotten. "Fflewddur," she gasped, "oh, Fflewddur, it's you."

"A Fflam in the flesh." He took her hands and held them out as though he were going to dance her about the yard, but merely stared at her and grinned. "Great Belin, look at you, love. If it were known at large that Coll grew such pretty things in his garden, you'd all never know a minute's peace here." He winked rakishly. "I don't need to ask if farm life suits you; I can see it plainly."

"Flatterer," she retorted, blushing, not so much at his compliments as at the fact that Taran was standing at his shoulder, listening to them with an embarrassed expression that suggested he didn't know whether to agree or not. "Should I ask whether kingship or barding suits you lately?"

"Ah." He dropped her hands and gestured toward the cottage. "Well, that's what this council will decide. I've been invited in some capacity, so it remains to be seen whether Gwydion wants a sire or a singer." He leaned toward her with a conspiratorial air. "But between you and me, I'd prefer the latter."

A cough from behind him drew her attention, and she looked around and down in surprise, noticing for the first time the leather cap that hovered behind Fflewddur's elbow, the tufts of red hair and grumpy expression beneath it. "Doli!" She resisted an urge to drop to her knees to look him in the face.

The stocky dwarf bowed, his red eyes twinkling. "Well met again, Princess. I'll forgive you for overlooking me, seeing how hard it is for anyone to see past this spectacle when he's performing." He jerked his head at the bard, who masked his grin in an expression of mock offense.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Fflewddur retorted. "It's hardly my fault you can't get used to being invisible, old boy."

"Humph!" Doli growled, so like her memories that she laughed out loud again.

"Oh, it's good to see you both!", she sighed, taking Fflewddur's arm as they continued toward the cottage. "I wish we'd known you were coming."

"I take it you're both as in the dark as we are over what it's all about," Fflewddur remarked. "Gwydion didn't even tell me it was a council - just suggested a visit to Caer Dallben was in order. He's keeping this one close."

Coll had dragged the big table and several kegs out into the front garden, and Gurgi, always eager to be helpful, was laying out platters and mugs; strange men by twos and threes were gathering there for refreshment. Eilonwy cast Taran a meaningful look. "We'd better help."

Taran hesitated a moment, clearly reluctant to leave the company of their friends, but nodded, and accompanied her to the cottage. "You should see the sort that are here," he murmured. "All camped out in the grain field - war bands."

"I saw them." Eilonwy stacked loaves of bread in his arms. "Here, take these out. I'll serve the pottage."

He shifted from one foot to the other, balking. "I'm part of this council! I don't want to be seen...I mean..."

He trailed off, seeing her frown. She'd already picked up a ladle and pointed out the door with it to keep from smacking him over the head. "So is Coll, unless I'm much mistaken! If Coll son of Collfrewr, the savior of Hen Wen, can serve princes with his own two warrior hands I expect it's no dishonor for an Assistant Pig-Keeper to do it. Now move."

Taran moved, without much enthusiasm, and she turned to the hearth, where a stack of wooden bowls lay waiting. Coll bustled in. "Good lass," he clucked, with obvious relief, when he saw her ladling out the pottage. "They'll eat for half an hour yet before Dallben wants everyone. Make sure you get a bite before it's all gone."

"Think there'll be enough?" Her stomach was growling at the smell of the roast rabbit as he took up the spits. "There must be a hundred here."

"Most brought their own," Coll said, heaping the meat upon a wooden platter and grabbing the saltcellar. "The bands are cooking out in their camps. It's just the leaders here now, and Smoit not arrived yet, there's a mercy." He hurried away, his bald head gleaming.

Taran returned, Gurgi on his heels, and both began taking up the steaming bowls to carry them out. On his fifth or sixth trip in the boy was glowing. "You must come meet this man," he told her eagerly. "Adaon, the son of Taliesin. Fflewddur says he's the bravest warrior _and_ the most promising future bard in the whole country. He's telling a story now - you should hear him."

"I'd love to," Eilonwy answered tartly, "when I can set foot out of this room for half a minute. Here wait, take the cheese out, and the apples. Is everyone served yet?"

"All but that Pen-Llarcau fellow." Taran scowled, his dark brows beetling together, a little flush of anger coloring his face as she piled more food into his arms. "He's off under the trees, eating his own provisions. Too good for the rest of us, I suppose. _I'm_ not going to invite him in."

"I can't blame you there." She filled bowls for herself and Taran and balanced hunks of bread on top of each. "Come on. Coll said to make sure we fed ourselves, so might as well take the chance where we can."

Outside the sunlight was dazzling after the dim kitchen. A dozen or so men were gathered about the big table, seated on stumps or upon the low stone fence that surrounded the yard; they were conversing jovially, for the most part, the mood one of gaiety at meeting old friends and companions. Gwydion looked serious as always, and a large, dark fellow near him was eating in silence, a little apart.

Taran led her to a small group that included Fflewddur and, for a group of that inclusion, was unusually quiet. As they approached she realized it was because everyone in it was attending raptly to one figure who was speaking - or perhaps, chanting? -something halfway between poetry and prose, the cadence of his voice turning ordinary words into almost-music. Eilonwy had heard enough of the bardic style in Caer Dathyl to recognize a recitation, and hurried to find a place to sit where she could hear him better, but it seemed too late; just as she stepped up, the speaker fell silent, and his listeners broke out into exclamations of admiration, a few of them clapping their hands and stomping the ground as expressions of praise.

Fflewddur, noticing her, rose quickly from his stump and motioned for her to take his place. The other men stood as well as he took her hand and pulled her into their circle, announcing grandly, "the Princess Eilonwy." She flushed, embarrassed, as they all inclined at the waist and murmured greetings. She had never gotten quite used to court manners, and though there was something pleasant about the tokens of respect afforded ladies and rank, it seemed a bit silly and out-of-place here, in this place where she regularly scoured pots and shoveled manure. She noticed Taran, standing outside the ring, looking bemused and a little wistful at the proceedings, and felt some strange, indefinable thing twist at her insides.

Fflewddur gestured toward the man who had been speaking and presented him by name; the Adaon Taran had mentioned. He was a young man, she saw, younger than Fflewddur though older than Taran; in his early twenties, perhaps, tall and well-proportioned. Straight black hair fell to his shoulders, framing a finely-shaped, handsome face. He bowed to her with the noble bearing of one raised among royalty, and as he rose she caught her breath at the strange brilliance of his grey eyes.

"Well met, my lady." Adaon extended a hand to help her sit, the careless poise with which he did so arresting her from her usual habit of plunking down like a sack of turnips. She sank as gracefully as she could manage to Fflewddur's vacated stump, rather bedazzled by the smile the young man cast from her to the bard and back again. "Your name I know also, thanks to our gallant friend's excellent tales."

Fflewddur attempted to look modest and failed, as she grinned at him. "I wonder," Eilonwy remarked, "how many of his accounts of me are quite accurate."

"They are _entirely_ and _precisely_ accurate, as you well know I'm not allowed poetic license," the bard sniffed, and then smiled at her, his gold-hazel eyes twinkling. "But in a few special cases, the facts are quite impressive enough on their own."

"You're in rare form," she said, and Adaon laughed.

"Indeed. I must learn the art of compliments from this master," he said. "How is it such a silver-tongued rogue remains unattached?"

Eilonwy and Taran both looked at Fflewddur with interest, for this was a question they had pondered together, but the bard deflected, with a rueful, self-deprecating grimace. "Men resort to flattery when they've little else to offer," he said, "which is why you have no need of it. Speaking of which, how fares sweet Arianllyn?"

Ears pricking, Eilonwy returned her attention to Adaon, who was setting his mug down with a wistful smile. "She is well. Disappointed, a little, that I am taking part in this quest. We had hoped to be wed before winter, but it seems unlikely now."

So he was betrothed. Eilonwy, feeling unaccustomedly shy, covered her silence by eating, listening to Fflewddur banter, and wondering what sort of woman had captured this man's heart. She had seen a few of the young ladies who populated Caer Dathyl, from a distance, and not cared for them overmuch. They talked of nothing but young men. Adaon...handsome, well-spoken, warrior, _and_ bardic son of Taliesin to boot, probably had every faint, tittering creature in the castle ready to throw herself at his feet.

A clang from the bell at the cottage door drew their attention. Coll was there, shouting for all to assemble inside; it was time for the council. Taran was on his feet in a moment, dropping his bowl on the ground and heading for the cottage without a backward glance. Eilonwy looked at his fallen implements with annoyance, guessing who would be expected to do the washing-up now that they were all going in. Fflewddur cast her a sympathetic look as he rose. "Dirty business," he grunted. "Leave it all, and we'll help you after the council's over."

She shook her head. "No. I might as well have something to do. Gurgi can...help," she finished, seeing that Gurgi, in his way, was already helping clean the dregs from the fallen bowl. He had sat quietly and eaten from his own platter throughout the repast, which must have been a terrible test of his will, and she giggled, watching his amber eyes glazing over above the rim of bowl.

"Yes, yes," he said dreamily, licking his lips with a long pink tongue. "Gurgi will help wise princess with pickings and stackings, washings and sloshings. He will be good." Eyes gleaming, he trotted to the table, where the departing warriors had left the scattered remnants of their meals.

Adaon and Fflewddur took leave of her - Adaon with another bow, while Fflewddur only smirked - and Eilonwy sat, watching them all pile into the house until she wondered it didn't burst at the seams. The last to go in was a giant of a man with a flaming red beard who rode up just as Gwydion was heading inside; he dismounted and flung himself roaring at the Prince of Don like an attacking bear. Startled, she sprang up, but Gwydion was clapping the bear on the back, apparently unfazed, and the roaring seemed to be words, though she could not quite make out what they were. This imposing personage squeezed through the door and it shut behind him.

Peace fell suddenly upon the yard, broken only by the low _brrrcchhth-tuk-tuk_ of chickens come to seek out the crumbs of their feast, and the whispering of dry leaves in the orchard. Eilonwy sighed, stretched, and looked around at the scattered remnants.

Well. It wouldn't clean itself.


	3. Chapter 3

Well over an hour passed. Eilonwy spent it hauling loads of dishes and platters back to the scullery, sending Gurgi out for buckets of clean water from the spring, scrubbing and drying the earthenware and stacking it neatly upon its shelves, and conscious of an ever-more-urgent curiosity about what could be happening within the cottage. She thought of strolling by Dallben's window - casually, of course, not necessarily on purpose, and then whatever she overheard would be accidental - but decided against it; Dallben always anticipated such tricks, and would have taken proper, and possibly unpleasant, precautions.

She had just set the last of the dishes in their places when a familiar rhythm of pounding feet interrupted her thoughts; then Taran crashed through the doorway so wildly that she spun around with a startled yelp, fearing some mishap. He was breathless; his face was alight, and both hands clutched a sword in a scabbard.

"Look!" he gasped out, holding the weapon toward her. "Look what Dallben gave me - for my own! Truly mine!"

His elation and pride were pulsing around him in waves so almost-tangible that Eilonwy had to suppress a gesture of wanting to waving away smoke. She grinned, stepping closer to examine the sword. The bronze pommel and scabbard were plain and unadorned, but it was a sturdy, well-crafted weapon. She was pleased, for his sake. "It's -"

"Gird it on me!" Taran interrupted. "I mean...if you please." His face flushed suddenly, dark against his glowing eyes. "Say you will. I want you to be the one to do it."

She blinked, and stared at him, breathing all at once become burdensome. Warmth surged over her like flame spreading over a sheet of parchment. "I..." she swallowed "...Yes, of course." Conscious of the breathlessness of her own voice, she felt her face grow even warmer, and hoped rather desperately that the dimness of the room was helping to hide her flaming cheeks. _Stop being an idiot. It's just a sword._ But she could not keep from smiling. "If you really-"

"I do!" he blurted out, swerving forward in his eagerness - and then, finding that this placed an awkward lack of space between them, stepped instantly back, his eyes lowered in embarrassment. "I mean," he added, with the hint of a stammer, "after all, you're the only girl in Caer Dallben."

Eilonwy blinked again.

Once, last spring, she had watched Coll lance an ox that had bloated itself on new grass, jabbing into its air-swollen stomach with a thin, razor-tipped iron blade, standing back at the resultant explosive deflation.

She thought, now, that she rather knew how the ox had felt.

The air that had seemed so insufficient a moment ago flew out of her in a rush of anger. "So that's it!" She backed away from him until she ran into a table, barking her hip on the edge. It did not improve her mood. "I might have known something was wrong when you started being so polite."

Snatching up a towel and bowl, she scrubbed fiercely at the earthenware - already quite dry, but it was better to look at something other than Taran's startled face. He looked, she decided, exactly as the ox had. "If that's your only reason, Taran of Caer Dallben, you can find someone else, and I don't care how long it takes you, but the longer the better!"

Her voice broke on the last word. Llyr, she was going to _cry, could_ this ridiculous circumstance get any worse? _Stupid, stupid-_ which one of them was? After all, she was the one who had thought-

Well, never mind what she'd thought.

Taran was standing there bewildered; even without looking at him she could read his confusion in the very air. "Now what's wrong?" he said, with evident exasperation. "I said 'please' didn't I?"

She made no answer, pinching her mouth together, and he must have interpreted her silence as a weakening, for he stepped up to stand next to her. "Come, don't be cross. Do gird it on me," he urged, and added, in a conspiratorial murmur, "I promise to tell you what happened at the council."

The towel slowed on the bowl as she concentrated fiercely on _not_ turning her head toward him. "I don't want to know," she growled through gritted teeth, trying to ignore his gaze burning into the side of her face. "I couldn't care less what-"

From the corner of her eye she saw him grin. Oh, _blast._

Eilonwy froze, struggling, and then with a grunt of frustration she turned to him, blushing again, irritated at how he could disarm her with nothing more than that _dratted smile._ There it was, blooming over his face, quirked crooked at the left corner, under eyes that knew, without knowing how, that it would always undo her. Taran twitched his dark brows impishly and held the sword out to her again.

She threw the towel at his face and snatched the sword out of his hands. "Oh, _here_. Give me that thing."

He scrabbled at the towel, laughing, then slid his belt off and handed it to her, almost dancing in anticipation as she threaded it through the scabbard loops. She chuckled in spite of herself. "You look like Gurgi when he's watching dinner preparations. Hold your arms up."

He stood tall, beaming, and she stepped close and reached around him to flip the belt end across his back - the work of a moment, but before it was done she found herself breathless again. In the brief instant her arms were around him she thought he had turned his head, just a little, to inhale near her hair. She wondered what it smelled like; bonfire-smoke and hay, probably, just like him; when was the last time she'd washed it?

"Don't think I'm going through all the ceremonies and speeches about being brave and invincible," she said, to cover her self-consciousness. "To begin with, I don't think they apply to Assistant Pig-Keepers. And besides, I don't know them." A moment of fiddling with the buckle, the satisfying creak of old leather pulled tight. "There, now."

She stepped back to survey the result. This sword was a better fit than the ones he had carried throughout their first journey; its size and plain style suited to him...though perhaps it was just that he was taller and broader now, more suited to carrying any blade. "I must admit," she said, "it does look rather well on you."

Taran glowed and drew the blade, holding it up and twisting it in the air. "Yes. This is a weapon for a man and a warrior!"

She glared at him. His head was going to float right off his shoulders over this bit of metal, that was plain to be seen. What had Dallben been thinking, giving it to him? She' have words with the old man later. "Enough of that," Eilonwy snapped, stamping to bring him back to earth. "What about the council?"

He sheathed the sword with an expression only a little sheepish, and glanced at the door and window to see that they were not overheard. "We're setting out for Annuvin at dawn," he whispered. "To wrest the cauldron from Arawn himself. The one he uses to-"

"Annuvin!" she exclaimed, cutting him off in surprise. Just saying the word made a chill run down her spine, mingled fear and, despite all her upset of the morning, a fair bit of excitement. An offensive! "It's about time," she declared, "the Sons of Don decided to go out and _do_ something about Arawn, instead of fiddling about, waiting to see what he'll do next. I wonder it took them so long."

Taran looked shocked and a little annoyed. "I suppose _you_ think they should have marched upon Annuvin with the whole army years ago."

"Well," Eilonwy remarked coolly, "it isn't as though nobody knew where Arawn was. Leaving him alone for years so he could keep getting stronger and make cauldron-born and who-knows-what-all doesn't seem like the most sensible thing to me. I daresay it would have been much easier to defeat him when he was first setting himself up in Annuvin."

"That was ages ago," Taran snapped, incensed at her criticism. "You don't know _what_ they could and couldn't have done. I'd like to see you go up to Gwydion and tell _him_ what you think he should be doing."

"It might be exactly what he needs," she retorted, "but no matter - dawn, is it? Why didn't you tell me right away? I won't have half enough time to get my things ready." She whirled to survey the scullery shelves, mentally calculating portable foodstuffs. "How long will we be gone? I must ask Dallben for a sword, too. Do you think I'll need..."

"Wait, no," Taran interrupted, laying an arresting hand on her shoulder. "No, no. You don't understand." She frowned at him, less at his words than at the patronizing expression he had assumed. "This is a task for warriors. We can't be burdened with a girl. When I said 'we' I meant - "

He broke off as she jerked away from him, flinging his hand from her shoulder. "What?" she shrieked. "And all this while you let me think - Taran of Caer Dallben, you make me angrier than anyone I've ever met!"

All the jumbled feelings of the entire day suddenly rose up within her, fury uppermost, engulfing, choking; she gulped for breath. "Warrior indeed! I don't care if you have a hundred swords - underneath it you're still an Assistant Pig-Keeper and if Gwydion's willing to take you, there's no reason he shouldn't take me!"

Backing against the wall, Taran stood frozen, mouth open as if he'd meant to argue but forgotten what to say. Anger was battering at her control, crumbling it; the acid, metallic taste of magic was filling her mouth, forming itself into dangerous shapes. His face distorted in her vision until it was a white oval floating in the darkness, a target. If he stayed another moment...

"Get out of my scullery!" she roared in desperation, and Taran, too experienced for pride, fled out of the door - moments before a varied mass of crockery flung itself across the room like a flock of earthenware birds, and crashed in the place he'd stood.

Eilonwy leaned over the table, trembling, fighting down the overwhelming impulse for further violence. Holding it back felt like trying not to vomit; magic and bile had a similar taste and it still filled her mouth; her stomach lurched and she wrung a towel from the cold water bucket and buried her hot face in it.

When her breathing had calmed to a ragged shudder she lifted her eyes and stared at the pottery shards littering the floor. Oh _, Belin_...she'd catch it. Dallben would ban her from magic for a week and she wouldn't blame him. Her legs felt wobbly; with an hysterical gasp she slumped to the cold slate floor, leaned against a cider keg and gave up holding back all the tears that had built up since the morning. Throwing her arms around her knees, she buried her face in her skirts and sobbed stormily.

There was a familiar soft click of bared toenails on the slate, and then Gurgi's nose snuffled at her ear, his whiskers tickling her cheek. She raised her face to look at him, half-resentful that anyone should see her in her current state, but given the choice, she'd want it to be him. Whatever else he might be, Gurgi was always beautifully sympathetic to the moods of his favorite humans - even when they were at odds with one another. Which must make it hard for him sometimes, she thought, with a wry internal twitch.

Gurgi's amber eyes were wide and anxious. "Woe and sadness," he whimpered, "Gurgi knows what troubles wise princess. Yes! He knows, because he has also been banished. To stay behind with worrisome waitings while the great warriors seek the wicked cauldron!"

Eilonwy sniffed, and scratched his chin where the bristles were thinnest. "Would you _want_ to go? It's going to be dangerous, you know."

"Yes, yes! There will be dangers! But Gurgi knows the woods and the streams; he lived there long, long, and he is alive still, even though fierce creatures tried to catch him; oh yes, many times." He rolled his eyes and growled, adding. "He is bold and clever, and can stay in the trees with sneakings and peekings, and could help Master - help _all_ of the great warriors - be safe. But they say no. Gurgi is not a warrior or a man, so he must stay."

She scowled. "Yes, exactly. It's like being told you're a toadstool, isn't it? Useless, is what they mean." Anger still filled her, no longer explosive, but a smoldering simmer. "Do you know what Taran said to me? _We can't be burdened with a girl._ I've heard _that_ before. I wonder if he remembers." She scrubbed at her face with her skirt and rose wearily to her feet, crossing to the far wall to pick up the broken bits of earthenware, laying them in her apron.

Gurgi brought the broom, and between the two of them they cleared all the shattered bits from the floor. "If I were Medwyn," Eilonwy muttered through clenched teeth, "all earth and healing, I suppose I could mend these with a word. How wonderful it would be to do that...instead of just breaking and destroying things." She fitted two shards together and glared at the gaps in the seam, willing them to join, but nothing happened, and she sighed and dropped them into her lap. Gurgi looked at her in concern. "Wise princess has great magics," he said encouragingly.

"Not great enough," she grunted. "Here, get some fresh water, will you? I'll mop up the splinters."

He took the pail and scampered out. Intending to dump the rubbish somewhere outside, Eilonwy turned to the door with her apron full and almost ran into Dallben, who had materialized in the entryway with his usual unnerving silence. She gave a little startled yelp, and felt her cheeks grow hot. It shouldn't have been a surprise - she knew he would have sensed that sudden surge of magic even if he hadn't heard all her shouting - but _confound_ it! Why must he creep up on people so?

He surveyed the scene, his arms folded over the cloud of grey whiskers covering his chest. "Well?"

"I..." Eilonwy stopped, wrestling down the impulse to vindicate herself, but she could not pretend to be meek. She stared him down defiantly. "Yes. I lost my temper. I was...severely tested," she added, with a grimace, "but nobody was hurt."

"Except our dishware," the old man rumbled, with a beetling of his wiry eyebrows.

She sighed. "I don't suppose there's any way for me to fix them."

"Not in your current state," Dallben sniffed. He studied her for a moment; she stood, gazing morbidly at the broken shards in her apron.

"I can imagine what happened in here," he remarked, in a tone that suggested it was no more nor less than what he had expected. "It's too dangerous a journey for you. I hesitated even to send Taran, but..." He spread his hands in deprecation. "I have only myself to whom to answer for his safety."

"You could say the same for me," she argued. "I've got no one to care, either."

Dallben shifted in the doorway and she felt the quick flicker of his humor, mixed with sadness, before he said gently. "You are mistaken. Besides several people in this vicinity who care very much, you have a line of matriarchs that would give me no rest, night or day."

She glared at him at this, curiosity warring with sullenness. "They're all dead."

He swept his gnarled fingers through the air. "It doesn't matter. They are not to be trifled with, in this world or the next."

"It never stopped Achren."

"And was she ever anything but unpleasant?" Dallben said. "There was more than your recalcitrance and Arawn's oversight plaguing her, you know. Come," he went on, blocking further discussion. "Bring those pieces inside. I'll teach you how to mend them once you've calmed down."

* * *

"I don't understand," Eilonwy said, dumping the contents of her apron onto the table in Dallben's chamber, "why I can't so much as light a candle when I'm frustrated, but in a good tantrum I can blast half a shelf of crockery across the room without even trying."

Dallben lowered himself onto his chair with a rusty sigh. "It is a matter of control. Conjuring requires focus and intent. Anger erodes both, and power without boundaries is always destructive."

She slumped onto the stool opposite him, propping her elbows on the table, chin in hands. "Why is it so much stronger?"

"It is not. It is easier. And the results are often...more dramatic, to the observer. But just as in any ordinary pursuit, so it is in magic: creation requires care, skill and training. Any fool can destroy." He surveyed her in silence for a long moment; Eilonwy felt him probing at her mind thoughtfully.

"How do I even approach it?" she asked, fiddling with two shards, fitting them together and examining the light shining through the crack. "I didn't think I had any power over earth."

"Not directly," Dallben said. "But fire and water are forces to shape all else, and you can use them. What is pottery but earth and water, cured in fire?" He touched a long finger to the shards she held, muttered something. There was a trembling, a tremor in the air around them, and the clay moved in her hands, softened, joined. She caught her breath at the familiarity of it. "Wait, I know this, I -"

She scrabbled for another shard, searching for one that fit. Finally one snapped into place and she shut her eyes, remembering silent stones in dark tunnels, willing herself back into the darkness. _Move._ Her fingers trembled as the clay softened, flowed, shifted. She opened her eyes. The crack was gone.

"Well done," Dallben said.

Eilonwy let out a long, wavering breath. "I used to...to move the stones in Spiral Castle this way. I don't know how I learned it. After I found Dyrnwyn I thought...it was all through the whole place, that power. I thought it must be what moved things."

"Dyrnwyn sensed you." Dallben was sifting through more broken shards, handing her another that fit the half-mended bowl. "And I have no doubt it played some part in guiding you. But you moved those stones yourself."

Eilonwy fitted the last piece, breathed it together, set the mended bowl on the table, and swallowed hard, staring at it. Her fingers prickled, numb at the tips. "I hate how it feels," she said, as if confessing to a fault. "It's like being stung. Is it like that for you?"

"The mortal body," said Dallben, "was not designed to accommodate magic. Its effect on the senses is unique for each of those who practice it. But it is likely that, under Achren's influence, your experience of it was more unpleasant than most."

She stared at the table. "I'm never to be free of her, am I?"

Dallben turned his gaze to the window and said nothing for a long time. She felt him thinking. "We cannot choose or change what has gone before," he said, "only how we respond to it now. Achren will be with you until you set her free of your own will."

She had no patience with abstractions. Anger flared, indignation, to cover an aching sense of loss. " _I_ set her free? I was the one imprisoned." She scowled at her tingling fingers. "I don't even _know_ all that she took from me. How is she mine to do anything with?"

"What dungeon holds you now?" Dallben asked. "You are as free here as anyone can be, unless you choose to stay captive to your own fears." He sank back in his chair. "It is as I have told you since the beginning."

Eilonwy squirmed on the bench. "I've gotten...better."

"Better at controlling it," he conceded, then reached out to turn a pottery shard over, pointedly. "Sometimes."

She sighed, tired of the conversation, chafing at the unfairness of ...everything. Noises drifted through the window: men shouting instructions, the whickering and whinnying of horses. She heard Taran call for Coll with a question about extra saddlebags, and with a jolt she remembered what was in the wind. Dallben seemed to sense her thoughts.

"You'll find it easier to bear if you stay busy. By my count," he said, squinting at the remaining broken bits of crockery, "there are another four...maybe five bowls and platters there. Suppose you tend to them, now that you know what to do." When she frowned he raised his wiry brows. "Unless you'd prefer to help with the preparations out there."

Eilonwy coughed and picked up a pottery chunk.


	4. Chapter 4

In the chilly pre-dawn Eilonwy awoke, pulled from sleep by the jingling of bits and blowing of horses, the low voices murmuring from the yard below as the men readied their mounts and themselves for the journey. Eilonwy lay, sullen, staring at the heavy beam that crossed the whitewashed ceiling over her head, at the pale light winking from her silver pendant, swinging by its chain from a stray nail in the beam: the crescent moon, worn by all the royal women of Llyr, an emblem of which she had always been proud...now a reminder of why she wasn't down there with Taran, saddling a horse and strapping on a sword.

 _Silly_ , she thought at herself. _Yesterday you didn't want to go anywhere and were upset that Taran_ **_did_**. _Make up your mind._ Well, it was different, wasn't it, now that they'd come down to it. It was all very well not to want her peace disrupted, but since it was going to be whether she wanted it or not, she might as well have a hand in it and _do_ something other than waiting about at home.

With a frown she realized she'd be delegated all the farm chores in the absence of the men...not that there would be quite as much, now that harvest was done. The horses would be mostly gone and the stock let to pasture in the stubble fields. Hen Wen would need to be fed, the nanny goat milked, and the chickens looked after, but Gurgi could do all that as well. Other than that, she'd be mending things, cooking, cleaning, and watching Dallben meditate. Lovely.

She burrowed beneath her bedclothes with a grumble, toying with the notion of staying there until they were all gone, so she wouldn't have to watch Taran and Coll riding off without her. But no, they'd want breakfast and be too busy to get it themselves. Anyway she ought to say goodbye. Suppose something happened and one of them didn't...no, no. She wouldn't suppose that. After all, Gwydion was leading, and there were hundreds of warriors involved. It was a far cry from running through the wilderness with a few companions, with cauldron-born on your trail. Forcing back the cold prickle that had begun crawling up her neck, Eilonwy leapt up and snatched her pendant from its nail.

Someone had already stoked the fire; the chimney was warm and she dressed next to it hurriedly, shivering in the darkness; her unbound hair snapped and crackled as she dragged a boar-bristle brush through it. It did still smell like the bonfire. Funny how she could like the smell of woodsmoke in the air but not find it particularly pleasant it in her hair. With cold-stiff fingers she plaited it tightly and wound the long braids around her head, tying them about with leather laces.

The steep loft stairs creaked as she descended, a comforting, familiar sound. The hearth glowed, but no kettle steamed over it, and she set about remedying this, with a sort of grim resignation. She had just hung it in place when Dallben materialized at her left elbow.

"No need for that," the enchanter grunted. "Unless you want it. They're packing their breakfast. Lord Gwydion wants as early a start as possible."

"Oh." Eilonwy frowned at the kettle, as though it were at fault for being unnecessary. "Well, then. Bread and butter for us, and less washing-up. Unless you want an egg."

"No." Dallben looked tired, and old; she felt his worry seeping through the cracks of his will, and the cold prickle touched her again, tingling up her spine to her scalp. If even Dallben was worried... "No," he repeated, looking at her with clear eyes that, as always, read her thoughts. "I need nothing. Later. You should see them off." She waited for him to say something comforting, some assurance that the quest for the cauldron would be successful and they'd all be back before she knew it, wait and see. He did not.

She left him standing before the fire, and walked to the door of the cottage, feeling suddenly heavy.

There were horses standing everywhere, chuffing and stamping, their breath puffing out in little clouds in the pale light, saddles waiting bare on their backs, while strange men hurried to and fro, tying on packs, checking and re-checking supplies, speaking together in groups of two or three, their voices a low, subdued hum in the hush of early morning. Eilonwy peered anxiously around for a familiar face, and picked Coll out of the crowd, where he stood mopping his bald head with an old kerchief. She ran to him and threw her arms round his broad middle, kissing his cheek. "Be careful, Coll."

"Get on with you." He grinned, laying his broad hand on her braids and mussing them a little. "We'll be back before you know it."

At least someone had said it. She glanced around for Fflewddur, whose voice she had heard in the murmur, and found him in a low but animated discussion with Doli, who was already mounted on a pony and looked even more cantankerously amused than usual. When he saw her coming, the dwarf nodded in her direction with a _harrumph_ that made the bard turn around in surprise, his face reddening. Eilonwy raised an eyebrow at him. "What's that all about, then?"

Fflewddur snorted, looking embarrassed. "Nothing for a young lady's ears. Come to wish us success?"

"If I must," she sighed. "Since I'm not coming. I notice no one even asked."

Fflewddur looked at her ruefully. "If it makes you feel better, I'd rather be here. Good food and a comfortable bed, and time to compose a few new songs. But we must all do what we must." He returned her embrace heartily, murmuring in her ear, "You find something to keep yourself busy, and it won't seem so bad."

She grimaced. "Perhaps I should plan a nice welcome-back party? Give you all a good reason to return?"

"Ah, now," he said, setting her down and smiling at her with an affection unperturbed by her sarcasm. "You're reason enough, both to go and return. Don't you forget that."

She knew he meant it "Well, go on then, and do something worth writing new songs about."

"If we're lucky." He grinned and winked as he swung up to the saddle. His face changed suddenly, softened, and she followed his nod to observe Taran a few paces away, standing holding Melynlas's bridle and watching them both awkwardly.

So he wanted a fond farewell, did he, after not apologizing for what he'd said nor even paying the slightest bit of attention to her after their quarrel yesterday? She'd seen him! - trailing Gwydion and his men around like a fawning hound, desperate to be accepted into their company and ignoring everyone else. She'd spent the whole evening on the fringes. Once finished mending the crockery she had tried to be helpful, packing food and preparing gear, but found herself mostly in the way, and finally retreated to the cottage to sulk in peace and help with dinner. It was a much smaller affair than their midday feast, only served to the household and a few guests, but even then Taran had left her, taking his meal outside to sit around the fire and listen to the men talk about their exploits - something she might have enjoyed, herself, but had he asked if she wanted to join in?

Eilonwy marched past him without a glance. She didn't need to see him to be aware of his consternation; passing him was like walking through fog, and it chased her, dragging at her feet as she moved toward the cottage door. Blast it, she couldn't even ignore him properly; he...he _felt_ too much.

He started to say something as she neared the house and she whirled around, furious, at him and at herself. "I'm not speaking to you!" She flung the words at him like arrows. "After the way you acted. It's like asking someone to a feast, and then making them wash the dishes! Go on, go with them. That's where you want to be, isn't it? I shan't _burden_ you any more."

Taran shut his mouth and looked at her in silence, with the pained, confused expression of one who wants to say many things that all contradict one another. Finally he turned away and she gulped a deep breath to fight back a sob as invisible talons dug into her heart. If he should come to harm in all this…

Eilonwy broke away from the door and ran, reaching Melynlas just as the boy had settled into the saddle, and clutched at a stirrup. Taran looked down in surprise. "Farewell, anyway," she gasped out, before he could say a word. "That doesn't count as speaking."

His eyes glowed, caught in the first ray of sunrise, and he made a move as if to take her hand, but there was a shout from the head of the group of horsemen, and the whole company began to shift in response. Melynlas danced impatiently away from her, carrying Taran with him, and another warrior cantered past, cutting off her view. As one the company moved off, a shifting mass of horses' legs and men's helmeted heads, with a music of jingling tack and the dull rhythm of hoof beats. Gurgi, with a howl, shot from the barns and loped alongside them on all fours. Eilonwy saw Taran turn in the saddle to order him back, and the creature stopped, and sat forlorn and dejected at the edge of the orchard, watching the warriors disappear. The boy looked back and waved once, proudly; then the trees swallowed him up. Silence fell, broken only by the swish of the wind in the leaves and the clucking of hens.

"Well," said Dallben, from the doorway, "now we wait. I must meditate." Eilonwy glanced at him; he wore his usual half-asleep expression, but shot her a keen look before he turned away. "Stay out of trouble."

She glared after him, biting her lip, wondering, for once, about his clairvoyance. If he knew what was in her mind he'd tie her up. It was madness, of course, pure impulse, born of that last moment of pain in parting. But no less powerful for all that.

Not being invited wasn't the same as being forbidden. Suppose...suppose she…

"Gurgi," she called, and the creature came running, whimpering. He fawned at her feet, his ears drooping.

"Alas! Woe and sadness," he moaned. "The mighty warriors have gone! There is nothing now but fears and tears until they all return!"

"Maybe not," she said thoughtfully. "Did they take Mefusen and Hapus?" Her roan mare and Gurgi's pony might have been used as pack animals. But if not—

Gurgi shook himself. "No. The great warriors brought their horses for packings, and Master and the farmer took only their own. Bold princess wishes to go for ridings?"

"Yes." It was whispered; a breathless, desperate word. "And you must come as well. See to the saddling, will you? I must make some preparations."

Gurgi froze for a moment, staring at her; then his ears pricked and his golden eyes gleamed; his teeth bared in what passed, in him, for a grin. "Should Gurgi bring his wallet of crunchings and munchings? Should he prepare for long...very long ridings?"

She nodded. "Very long. Pack an extra cloak. Be quick and quiet about it, and don't let Dallben see you."

"Gurgi is silent as mice," he proclaimed, and scurried to the stable.

The loft stairs creaked again at her weight, a sound not so comforting this time; she held her breath, but Dallben must be deep in meditation; no peep came from his chamber. At the top she paused, thinking, and crossed to the old chest where cast-off clothing was kept, rummaging within until she pulled out one of Taran's old long-sleeved tunics, patched and faded, but not too threadbare. Resolutely she stripped off her own gown and pulled the garment over her head. Once belted, it hung nearly to her knees, barely longer than her shift and perfect for riding. She laced up her boots, tucked a small hunting knife into her belt, and after a moment's hesitation, retrieved her bow and quiver from its corner. Best be ready for anything.

Extra cloak, leggings, and wool stockings, wrapped into her rolled blanket and tied with twine; she took one last look around the loft, tucked her bauble into her pocket, and crept quietly down the stairs and out of the cottage, grabbing an apple from the table on the way.

Gurgi was bustling about Mefusen and his own shaggy pony, adjusting their tack and talking to them in his own combination of chirrups and snuffles that they seemed to understand; she left him with her bundle and went to make rounds of the morning chores. Coll or Taran had already milked the goat and let the ox out to pasture; she made sure Hen Wen had water and food and clean bedding. The white pig came trotting to the fence, grunting in welcome, and Eilonwy scratched behind her bristly ears. "I suppose Dallben can look after things while we're all gone," she mused out loud, feeling a bit guilty. "He always has his magic if he needs it. I wonder if I ought to leave a note...but no, he'll know. Dallben always knows. I wouldn't do it, you know, except I can't bear to stay here while they all go into danger."

Hen Wen snorted, and nosed among her straw for hidden delicacies, utterly content and unconcerned. "Well," Eilonwy said, "at least you're happy at home, even if certain people refuse to be. Do you even know they've all gone? I suppose you'll realize it in a day or two when you miss Taran. I'll try to make sure he stays out of mischief. You know how he tends to attract it." She tossed her apple core into the enclosure, and left Hen Wen crunching it delightedly.

Gurgi had the horses ready, and had even thought to fill extra water pouches and hang them to the saddles by the time she returned to him. He was wrapped in a hooded cloak, with his magical wallet slung over his shoulders, and he wriggled all over with anticipation and trepidation. "Wise princess is ready for ridings and stridings? It is time, yes? We will join the great warriors?"

She gathered up the reigns and scrambled up onto Mefusen, heart pounding. "It is time, but we must go slowly. If we catch up to them too soon, they'll just send us back. We'll need to stay out of sight and follow their trail...which shouldn't be too difficult, with so many."

"Yes, yes!" Gurgi warbled. "Gurgi can find their trail! Many horses leave such smellings and scentings behind Gurgi could follow them with his eyes closed." He clucked to Hapus, and Eilonwy let him move ahead, his shaggy head bouncing with the fat little animal's jolting trot. A sense of elation, of freedom, rose up in her chest and out, tingling through her fingertips and down to her toes. She lifted her eyes to the gold-and-scarlet trees, took a deep breath, and clamped her knees to the horse's ribs.

The warriors' trail was broad and obvious. Gurgi rode in front, fondly believing his tracking abilities indispensable. Eilonwy called him back occasionally, when the freshness of horse leavings indicated that they might be too close to their quarry for comfort, but was content to let him lead for the time being.

Various scenarios of what would happen when she did catch up with the men presented themselves to her mind, none of them pleasant, but she pushed them away impatiently. Let them fuss. They had bigger problems, anyhow, and after an initial bit of shouting and lecturing would likely take no notice of her, so long as she kept up and didn't make any trouble.

It felt…tingly and fluttery, to be traveling again, after the year of quiet at Caer Dallben. In that year she had made herself comfortable with the fields and streams and woods within an hour's ramble all around the little farm. Now her heart thumped, torn between excitement and trepidation, the first time she looked back and recognized nothing. By the time the faint murky glow of the sun behind the clouds rose to its highest, she and Gurgi were well beyond the range of anything even remotely familiar, and she began to watch the warriors' trail with greater care, stopping where they had stopped to water the horses, filling her own water pouches and carefully studying the surrounding woods.

She noted nothing unusual, either with her ordinary senses or the internal guide she had learned to trust in such surroundings; a vague, inexplicable sense of living things like lights and shadows, flickering around her. These woods were alive - they always were; filled with thousands upon thousands of creatures both large and miniscule, all of them together going about their business like the individual threads in a tapestry who did not know they were part of something larger. Eilonwy stretched, breathing it in; it was _good_ , the way things ought to be, and she smiled without knowing it.

The trail now followed a meandering brook, picking along around mossy stones and through hollow glades where the autumn leaves lay damp and muffling. Late in the afternoon, they emerged from the trees and beheld a broad sweep of gray, lazy-flowing water blocking their way. At its bank, the footprints of many horses were fresh in the mud.

Eilonwy, looking at it, wrinkled her nose. "It's the Avren. This must be where they forded."

Gurgi made a noise somewhere between a whimper and a bark. "Yes, yes! Great warriors have crossed the river!" He poked a toe in the shallow edge of the water. "This will be a cold and shivery splashing!"

"Yes." Eilonwy hesitated, staring at the water, thinking. At this season, Great Avren would not be terribly swift, but it was wide, and she knew from Taran's rueful testimony that it was deep. "It is cold. And just going to get colder." She squinted at the pale, blurry patch of sun pushing through the grey sky; it would do little to dry or warm them, and building a fire on the other side would take more time than she wanted, even using magic.

Grimly resolved, she sat down on a nearby rock, pulled off her boots, stockings, and leggings, and rolled them into a ball. "If I had proper magical training," she muttered to herself, standing up and unbuckling her belt, "I could probably swim across and stay bone-dry. Or make the water part for us. Or just _walk_ over it. So whatever happens now is Achren's fault." Stripping her tunic off over her head, she wrapped it around the rest of her clothes, tied the whole bundle as high on the saddle as she could manage, and tied the reins to the saddlebow, shivering all the while in her thin undershift. Probably she ought to take it off, too, but she balked at the thought. Not with Gurgi present - human or not.

Gurgi was watching her with his head at that odd angle that denoted confusion; never did he look more like a dog than when wearing this expression and she was grateful for it now. "I'll dry faster than my clothes will," she explained, "so I don't want them wet if I can help it." She pondered ordering him to tell no one and decided against it. He wouldn't understand why, and belaboring the matter would just make him remember it when otherwise…well, it was normal for him to go about naked, wasn't it? She giggled suddenly. "It's too bad you can't take off your fur and put it back on at the other side."

Gurgi looked surprised. "Gurgi's fur dries fast, fast! He shakes and quakes and the water flies off like gnats! No fear for him!"

"Lead on, then," she ordered, and he splashed into the river, clucking to Hapus, who moved with less enthusiasm. Eilonwy, gripping Mefusen's bridle, followed, hissing as the touch of cold water brought the gooseflesh prickling up on her skin, rising from ankles to knees to thighs to waist. When it rose to chest height the cold crushed her like a vise of ice; a wave of panic flooded her and she gasped, throwing herself forward hard into the current, fighting the urge to turn back. _The only way out is through._

Mefusen blew and snorted as the current lifted them; she pushed away from the horse as she felt the water churning around his strong legs, and struck out on her own, slicing through the river with as much power as she could muster, kicking across the flow.

The current was sluggish, but the breadth of the river seemed even greater once they were in it. Before she was halfway across, her arms and legs were aching. She should have found a branch first; something that would float and help buoy her across. Eilonwy floundered, terrified, when hot fury flooded her. _I did not come all this way to be killed by **water.**_ The irony of it smote her; water was her element, was home; never had she feared it, and now it threatened her. A ludicrous vision of her lifeless body washed up on the bank, in her soaked and near-translucent shift, popped into her mind, and she would have laughed at the absurd horror of it if she'd had any breath to laugh. The idea of her companions finding her like that! It was not to be borne. Not even dead.

With a burst of desperate strength she plowed on anew, arms lifting and arcing, legs pumping until she no longer felt the cold, until the water itself felt solid, a thing that could be molded and manipulated; it enveloped her, an almost-sentient mass that shaped itself around her, curious at its sudden awareness of the small creature stubbornly struggling within it. A strange taste filled her mouth - not the acrid, metallic magic-taste but something that mingled freshness and salt together, bubbling hot and icy-cold by turns. Her numbed fingers felt suddenly hot; the curl of the current around them shone in her mind's eye like strands of silver.

And then her foot touched pebbles and pushed against solid ground; Gurgi grabbed her wrist and she clutched at his wet fur, stumbling with him up the bank. A bit further downstream, Hapus and Mefusen were snorting and shaking the water from their manes.

Eilonwy, shivering uncontrollably, fought the inclination to throw herself upon the nearest patch of turf and curl up like a woodlouse; no, it wouldn't do; if she did that she'd never get up again. She called to Mefusen and pulled down her bundle of clothing - blessedly dry but for the end of one sleeve that had trailed out of the ties.

Gurgi had shaken himself with a violent shudder; his wild fur stuck out in bedraggled spikes but he looked otherwise no worse for their swim. He capered around her joyfully. "Wise princess swims the river as well as Gurgi! And faster than great warriors and all their horses, he thinks. We will catch them soon, soon!"

"Not too soon," she hissed through chattering teeth, but managed to grin. "Go and find their trail and I'll catch up once I've dressed."

He bolted away and when he was out of sight she peeled her wet shift off and danced a bit in the cold air to try to dry herself, wishing desperately that the sun would come out for just a few minutes. It was horrid to pull dry clothes on over her damp skin but it had to be done. Once decently attired, she wrung out her shift and stuffed it in a saddle bag, took Mefusen by the reins and followed Gurgi on foot, leading the horse. She'd walk until she was warm.

They found the trail with no trouble and headed back into the woods. Eilonwy turned once to glance back at the Avren, thoughtfully. Something had happened there…something besides almost drowning. She wasn't sure what precisely.

Her fingers still tingled. _Fire and water._ The daughters of Llyr, according to legend, wielded both, but her education had been one-sided. Achren had been all fire. Dallben's lessons seemed neutral in comparison, always centered around controlling her thoughts and emotions; he had not yet taught her very many actual spells and she wondered if he ever intended to. What was Dallben's gift, anyway? He seemed a bit of everything; if the tiny insights of his powers she sometimes caught at moments he left unguarded were any indication, they defied any attempt at classification, and Dallben never spoke of his history or indeed of himself at all. Perhaps it was a privilege of being the most powerful enchanter in Prydain, never to have to explain anything, but it made him an often maddening master.

"Do you ever ask him _why?_ " she had queried once, early on, to Taran, after one of the old enchanter's incomprehensible edicts.

He had glanced at her in some surprise. "Yes. I used to. Quite a lot," with a rueful laugh. "It never did any good, so I gave it up. His answers are just more confusing. Try it and you'll see."

"But he doesn't…" she hesitated. "He doesn't get angry?"

"Not really. Testy, you know. Sharp, sometimes, if I got very cheeky. But not angry. I don't think I've ever seen him truly angry." He had looked at her curiously but Eilonwy had said nothing more, did not tell him how Achren had treated all questions as open defiance, dealt swift consequence to any delay in following orders. Not that it had made her any less defiant. She had rarely angered Achren on purpose, but crossing her, even secretly, was satisfying, and she had learned to endure most consequences without crying. Much.

But Dallben was different. She had no wish to displease him.

No doubt he was displeased with her now, for her absence would be known to him by this time. _Stay out of trouble_ , he had ordered. Well, here was open defiance if ever there had been. It was odd of him not to place more…well, more tangible boundaries up. He knew her well enough by now to suspect her current course of action - knew her better, she sometimes thought, than she knew herself. Why had he allowed it? Had he secretly wanted her to go? Perhaps it was a test of character. She wondered whether she were passing or failing it.

The clumsy _swish_ of a bat flying over head made her look up sharply, arrested her thoughts. It was getting dark. She whistled to Gurgi, still trotting happily up ahead, and he reigned Hapus around and waited for her to catch up.

They made camp in a little hollow surrounded by alders, and she risked a small fire to guard against the cold seeping down from the darkening sky. Birch bark, a few twigs; she took a breath, thought of sitting in her favorite crook in her favorite big apple tree at Caer Dallben until she felt her heartbeat meld slowly into the creak of the wood and the flutter of leaves, murmured and snapped her fingers. Sparks kindled and blazed, licking up the twigs with light and warmth, and she sighed happily. Bless Dallben.

Gurgi doled out provisions from his magical wallet and she chewed the stuff without much interest; it had the texture of dried meat but none of the flavor. He drew first watch, and settled onto his haunches, his ears pricked. "I haven't slept outdoors since we came to Caer Dallben," Eilonwy mused out loud, as she wrapped herself in her cloak and burrowed into the dry leaves. "I've missed it a little."

"Bold princess says so, now," Gurgi observed, with a lopsided grin at her. "But her last sleepings-out were in the middle of the summertimes, with the glowing and flowing of the sunshine to warm the trees even after dark."

"That's true," she admitted. "Not quite so comfortable now. Do you miss your bed?" At the cottage he slept on a rug before the hearth - a spot he had chosen himself, though she had offered him a heap of straw in the loft.

"Gurgi's bed is good for snoozings and snorings in safety," he said, scratching his ears languidly with a hind foot. "But he has slept in the trees most of his life, and sleepings are good wherever they happen."

"Well, make sure you wake me when they catch up with you too much," she admonished, and pulled her hood over her head. It smelled like woodsmoke. Like her hair. Like Taran's jacket. Like the harvest bonfire at home. She thought of the firelight, shining from the dome of Coll's head, like a small reflection of the golden moon. Whatever happened out here, it was comforting to know Caer Dallben was there, waiting for them. Enough, for now; she could sleep well in a world with Caer Dallben in it.


End file.
